Chapter Thirty-Three
The room is small and peculiar, the walls ribbed with wooden beams which bend overhead and meet in a high apex; it takes me perhaps twenty minutes of staring blankly up at that ceiling before I realize the room is shaped to resemble an ornate birdcage.
A simple narrow bed, a broken harpsichord, and a faded carpet are all that furnish the space.
I sit in the center of the room with my knees drawn to my chest, my hands wrapped around my legs, still wearing the resplendent gown and silken gloves.
How ridiculous I feel now, to have thought dressing up as one of them could possibly have made a difference.
How ridiculous and small, and every other wretched quality I saw reflected back at myself in the faerie queen’s emerald eyes.
Her very glance had diminished me to nothing more than a bird with a broken wing, fluttering pitiably on the floor.
And now she has put me in a cage, to let my foolishness finish me off.
I feel Lachlan’s touch even here, his hand squeezing my heart, his fury at my failure scorching my ribs.
I wonder if he knows the exact nature of my circumstances, or if he only has the general feel of them, or if perhaps he knows nothing at all and his cursed hold on me is simply following its natural course, the pain increasing as my sand drains from the hourglass he set on my life.
Bring me what I desire, dear Rose, or I’ll have no more use for you at all. At midnight, my time will be up, and he’ll consider me to have reneged on our second deal as I had on the first. He’ll wring the last miserable drop of life from my heart, and I will drop dead, right here on this floor.
At least my failure will not put Conrad or Sylvie at further risk.
He will be more vigilant now and ensure his sister does not return to the border where Lachlan can touch her.
They will remain in Morgaine’s service, though, bound to her will as I have been to Lachlan’s.
How arrogant I was to have imagined I could set them free.
Well. At least I will finally be free of Lachlan.
The thought is bitter and no comfort at all.
I want to live, Fates damn me! I don’t want to waste away in this room, not even in my own world, alone and miserable and racked with pain!
I want to live. I want to unravel the minutes back to my bedroom, and again feel Conrad’s hands on me, his breath warm on my neck, his hair twisted around my fingers. I want the future we would never have.
They took my threadkit from me when they locked me in here. So I yank out a strand of my hair and attempt to Weave it into a fire knot. If I set something ablaze, maybe they’ll let me out. Maybe I can still find a branch—
The hair snaps.
So does the next, and the next, and the next.
The sea silk is still tied around my wrist; I cannot bring myself to use it.
I pull a thread from the carpet and Weave that, but my heart is thrumming with so much pain I cannot begin to channel any energy into it.
And when I manage to push through the wall of pain, I encounter an unfamiliar current of energy, the magic of Elfhame entirely foreign and unbending.
It does not answer me the way the energy of my own world does.
Instead, it seems to hiss and recoil, offended I should even try to touch it.
Suddenly a great shudder runs through the walls. I shout and scramble up, the floor rolling beneath me, the light of the fruit-lamps above flickering. Is this because I tried to channel?
The tremor ends as soon as it began, but the guards outside yell to one another. The lights are dimmer but burn steadily again.
With a shiver, I slump over onto my side.
I cannot seem to stop shaking, and soon my thoughts become consumed with horrible speculation of what will happen to me in the end.
Will I know when I draw my last breath? Will I feel my soul leave my body?
Will I see the Fates bending over me, Atropos’s shears gleaming as she snips my life thread?
Or will there only be darkness and nothing, not memory, not consciousness?
Will I simply end and know nothing more at all?
These thoughts send chills racing down my body, and another clench of pain causes me to curl up tighter. My teeth begin to chatter. All my wanting turns to ash, and the fury and fight melts from my bones. Despair howls in like a frigid wind to fill the cavern of my body.
I find myself wishing the end would just come. That it would all be over, because waiting for it now seems to me to be ever so much worse.
Then I hear a knock on the door.
My head lifts, and I unfold shakily, keeping a hand on my heart as the door opens and Conrad slips into my little birdcage of a cell.
His face is pale and drawn tight, with shadows pooling beneath his eyes.
His hair is a dark tangle dusted with cobwebs, and the crystal-embroidered faerie suit is ragged at the hems, with a froth of white lace at his throat.
He’s wearing his own boots, but they’re splattered with mud. He looks terrible.
“Rose,” he says.
I shrink away, curling against the far wall in a miserable knot of despair and shame. Whatever condemnation he is here to deal out, I deserve.
He approaches slowly, his hand raised, and I cower deeper into myself.
“I did not come to hurt you,” he says, sounding pained. “Rose . . .”
“I have ruined everything,” I whisper. “Conrad, I am so sorry.”
I bury my face in my hands, my tears pouring out into my palms.
He kneels and without a word gathers me into his arms.
I let out a sob and grip him tightly, as if merely holding on to him by strength of will could tether me to life. Relief and confusion burn behind my eyes, spilling out in tears that Conrad wipes away with his thumb.
“I did not know,” he murmurs into my hair. “Forgive me for not understanding you earlier. For not hearing you out. I should have listened, instead of running off to Elfhame like the dog that I am.”
“I should have told you the truth sooner.”
“Why did you do it? Why did you give him control of your heart?”
“I thought I could save us both, and Sylvie too,” I whisper. “I deceived you, and I deceived myself most of all.” I brush my fingers over the cut on his cheek. “Oh, why did you not tell her it was me? That none of this was your fault? How you must despise me.”
He pulls back, holding my face between his hands and gazing at me as if I were the most precious and yet perplexing thing in the world. “Despise you? Fates, Rose Pryor. I could as easily despise the sun for rising or the stars for gleaming.”
“You don’t hate me?”
He combs his fingers through his hair, his features twisting into a grimace.
“I know how it seems. What a bastard I’ve been.
When Morgaine struck me, perhaps she knocked some clarity into my thick head at last. We are both of us bound by their threads, and to be angry with you is to dance on their strings.
I will not do it any longer. I will not accept that we cannot choose our own fates.
” He weaves his fingers through mine. “So damn my oaths to Morgaine. I have broken them.”
“What do you mean? How did you even get in here?”
His eyes dart to the door. “I caused a . . . distraction. Come. We must hurry.”
I shake my head as he pulls me to my feet. “No. Even in the World Above, his hold on me cannot be broken. If even Morgaine can’t—”
“You don’t need Morgaine, or anyone else.”
“But—”
“Hurry!” He pulls me through the door and to the left, and I have no choice but to follow. Dread and despair sour in my stomach, knowing it’s useless.
“You’re going to get yourself in more trouble,” I point out.
“I’ve taken care of it.”
“Care of what?”
“You, Rose. I’m taking care of you, as I ought to have done an hour ago, instead of running off to Morgaine. Damn her and damn my duty and damn this place. You will not die tonight. Faster, now!”
He knows these hallways in a way I thought they could not be known.
What seem to me to be ever-shifting passages, he follows with surety, like a boy in his childhood home, following narrow corridors and stairs I would not have noticed.
But strange as this palace is, it’s getting even stranger.
A thick drop of red liquid splashes on my bare shoulder.
“Conrad—the ceiling!”
We slow and look up and see cracks opening over our heads. From them, a liquid the color of blood runs and drips.
“What is it?”
He shakes his head, looking mystified. “’Tis . . . Dwirra sap.”
“What’s happening?”
“I believe my diversion is working. Come. We must go faster.”
Onward we race, through a palace that seems to be ripping at its seams. Gaps appear in the walls, jagged and ugly and fleshlike, bloody sap running from the openings.
“Something is wrong,” Conrad pants.
Suddenly he stops, and I run into him. He puts out an arm to steady me.
We are standing in the portal room. The great round glass waits where I left it, but the reflections on it waver as the room shakes.
“Conrad!” I look up and see a crack splinter across one of the support beams. “What did you do?”
“I made my choice,” he says breathlessly, and he turns to me, opens his coat, and takes out a white branch as long as my forearm, tipped with a few red leaves. “And I chose you.”
I gasp as he places the branch in my hands.
The moment my fingers close around it, the biting pain in my chest stops.
I breathe in deep, feeling cool relief roll through my body, my spine straightening, the tension draining from my muscles. I stare at the branch, and somehow, I know Lachlan knows I am holding it.
“This is what he meant to happen,” I tell him hoarsely. “This was it all along. He wanted you to steal the branch for my sake.”